Some feedback on the FAQs
Monday 15 August 2011 12:05:43 am
I recently twittered "The documentation for #ezpublish should be made more welcoming and more focused on common tasks." Here is my feedback on the FAQ pages (http://doc.ez.no/FAQ)
1. Grouping of the FAQs
- The current categories are too technical. Instead you could group questions for a specific group of users, for example:
- Content and community managers;
- Sys admins;
- Designers;
- Developers;
Another option would be to group the questions by type of task:
- About eZ Publish
- Installation
- Content Management
- Administration
- Design and templates
- Complex set-ups (multilingual, cluster)
- Optimization
- Troubleshooting
- Contribute
Of course both approaches could also be combined.
2. Order of the list
The order matters: on the current FAQ page 'Installation' should be in the top of the list, rather than 'eZ Market'. 'eZ Market' might be new and important, but to most users and newbies it is not.
3. User interface.
Too many clicks, not enough info about what is available after the next click. With all the AJAX stuff available in eZ Publish, it must be possible to develop a more user friendly user interface.
4. Where do the FAQs come from?
How are the questions selected that are included in the FAQ? Are these actual questions by users or just things that people submit? Who compiles the answers? Some of the questions are phrased a bit odd, like 'How does eZ Publish manage links?'.
5. Voting and commenting
You would really need to enable voting and comments to make the FAQs a valuable resource. Also, make it easy to submit questions. Try to involve the community to get those questions answered.
6. Visibility
Just one small link to FAQ on the docs homepage is not enough. The docs homepage should be improved (more later).
7. Discover
Use tags, tagcloud, etc. to give people alternative means to enter the FAQs.
What do you think?